Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt: EPL presented Chris Hedges to launch Freedom to Read Week 2013 in Edmonton. Chris spoke about injustice and corporate greed in America…and argued Canada is travelling the same path.

In 1951, only five years after World War II ended, I managed to make my way to Paris where I landed a job as a courier diplomatique (messenger boy) for the United Nations Sixth General Assembly. Despite the years of war and deprivation, Paris still was a special place with its history, its cafes, galleries, bridges, ornate edifices, and narrow winding cobblestone streets, some seemingly as old as the city itself.

Jim Crow is alive and well — and he has mounted a new attack on the law Martin Luther King dreamed of: the Voting Rights Act.

Today, February 27, the Supreme Court will hear a suit brought by Shelby County, Alabama, which challenges the right of the Department of Justice to review changes in voting procedure. Example: Attempts to cut the number of early voting days, to expunge “illegal alien” voters without any evidence, refusing Spanish-language ballots, have been blocked by the Department of Justice and courts because they have stopped Black and Hispanic citizens casting ballots.

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions.”
— Karl Marx, Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right

I have a love/hate relationship with religion and layers upon layers of both antipathy and affection for this complex reality. The same thing could be said for the revolutionary struggle. Continue reading →

Nobody to the left of Karl Rove would consider sending a petition to the Koch brothers to do anything that was in the interest of the people of this country. That’s because everyone realizes that these greedy, vicious dogs restrict their actions to stealing from the poor and causing whatever harm they can to the largest number of people.

Similarly, nobody in his/her right mind would send letters to General Betray-Us, McChrystal or any of the Pentagon power-brokers that define our foreign policy, asking them to stop murdering defenseless civilians around the world. Continue reading →

Injustices do not become any less unjust the longer they are not addressed, and when it comes to the “war on terror” launched by President Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, those injustices continue to fester, and to poison America’s soul.

Erik Laursen, author of The People’s Pension, The Struggle To Defend Social Security Since Reagan, describes the three decade long war against Social Security, beginning with its origins in the bowels of the Reagan administration, and the dynamics behind an effective long-term strategy, a look at the decades-long ideological attack on this all-important program, the hydra-headed campaign to cut and kill Social Security, conducted over decades by rightwing bankers, foundations, economists and politicians.

I was in the Swiss village of Begnins outside Geneva shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. I spent three days there with Axel von dem Bussche, a former Wehrmacht major, holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for extreme battlefield bravery, three times wounded in World War II, and the last surviving member of the inner circle of German army officers who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

I was reminded of my visit with von dem Bussche, whom I was interviewing for The Dallas Morning News, by the 70th anniversary of the execution of five Munich University students and their philosophy professor who were members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Continue reading →

France’s claim of combating terrorism in Mali does not add up. Re-conquest of this former French colony and control of rich natural resources in West Africa are some of the more plausible reasons for this criminal offensive that began on 11 January.

Yet another plausible reason is to showcase the Rafale, France’s new fighter-bomber.

www.democracynow.org – Wall Street Journal journalist Jess Bravin reports on the controversial military commissions at Guantanamo. Describing it as “the most important legal story in decades,” Bravin uncovers how the Bush administration quickly drew up an alternative legal system to try men captured abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks. Soon evidence obtained by torture was being used to prosecute prisoners, but some military officers refused to take part.

Marinaleda, Seville town of three thousand inhabitants is only ruled by Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo. Gordillo, has 30 years as mayor in Andalusia. In Marinaleda he performs community service initiatives alternatives to capitalist consumerist formula. This clashes with the more conservative parties and the most liberal of Spain. Continue reading →

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The Senate voted to save net neutrality. Now we need the House of Representatives to do the same, or else the FCC will let ISPs like Comcast and Verizon ruin the internet with throttling, censorship and unnecessary fees. Click the image below to write to Congress.

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Operation: #OneMoreVote

The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, letting internet providers like Verizon and Comcast impose new fees, throttle bandwidth, and censor online content. But we can stop them by using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We need one more vote to win in the Senate, and we’re launching an Internet-wide push to get it.

The Golden Rule

“That which is hateful to you do not do to another ... the rest (of the Torah) is all commentary, now go study.” - Rabbi Hillel

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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